Gendered Communication Patterns of Political Elites on Truth Social

Abstract

The influence of gender on online political communication remains contested, with existing scholarship providing mixed evidence as to whether gender shapes political messaging in digital environments. However, this debate has largely centred on mainstream platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), leaving the dynamics of alt-tech social media underexamined. This paper addresses this gap by analysing gendered patterns of political communication on Truth Social, a hyper-partisan platform that functions as a hub for the most committed followers of the American far right, a community closely associated with hegemonic masculine norms. To address this gap, we present the first large-scale analysis of political elite communication on Truth Social, using a novel dataset of 107k posts from 129 U.S. political figures. We examine the extent to which gender influences rhetorical style, topic framing, and audience engagement. We find that many gendered communication patterns documented on mainstream platforms persist on Truth Social. In particular, women political elites tend to express more joy and less anger than men and receive significantly higher levels of audience engagement. At the same time, more nuanced differences emerge. Although men and women political elites discuss largely similar conservative themes, they differ in how these issues are framed and in the rhetorical strategies employed. Notably, posts associated with women political elites contain higher levels of fear-based rhetoric, potentially suggesting selective adaptation in communicative style to navigate gender norms on the platform. These findings suggest that on Truth Social, an alt-tech platform with distinct ideological characteristics, mainstream gendered constraints persist, but are expressed through platform-specific communicative patterns shaped by its partisan orientation and sociotechnical environment.